Make Your Damn Bed

I feel like a lot of people expect propaganda to be on the nose. War posters, Uncle Sam pointing directly at you to recruit you for the war or directly glorifying it. But I am starting to notice how propaganda is becoming more and more insidious and targeted and effective.  In an episode a long time ago, I remember talking about the concept of Dialectical thinking, which refers to the ability to hold space for multiple, contradictory truths at once. The ability to use multiple truths and perspectives to arrive at a more comprehensive understanding of things. But it is work. It may feel more intuitive for some people, but as I have come to realize, holding space for nuance and complexity in understanding something, is not a task every person is capable of doing. So, if we’re talking about propaganda, and we are at the baseline of understanding that everything is political, I think it’s important to call out that this means propaganda is in EVERYTHING we consume, whether it’s in support of an ideology or a religion or control, it’s it is rarely obvious and typically buried in things we love for other reasons. SOURCES:Who's afraid of socialism? https://ips-dc.org/whos-afraid-of-socialism/What is democratic socialism + critiques: https://socialstudieshelp.com/economics/what-is-democratic-socialism-key-features-and-criticisms/Communism vs. Socialism https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/100214/what-difference-between-communism-and-socialism.aspThe DSA’s “What is Democratic Socialism?” https://www.dsausa.org/about-us/what-is-democratic-socialism/Resources for Resisting a Coup: https://makeyourdamnbed.medium.com/practical-guides-to-resisting-a-coup-b44571b9ad66SUPPORT Julie (and the show!): https://supporter.acast.com/make-your-damn-bedDONATE to the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund: www.pcrf.netGET AN OCCASIONAL PERSONAL EMAIL FROM ME: www.makeyourdamnbedpodcast.comTUNE IN ON INSTAGRAM FOR COOL CONTENT: www.instagram.com/mydbpodcastOR BE A REAL GEM + TUNE IN ON PATREON: www.patreon.com/MYDBpodcastOR WATCH ON YOUTUBE: www.youtube.com/juliemerica The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Today is a refresher course on the "awareness wheel" which leads us into tomorrow's episode. feeling outta whack? off kilter? need a lil grounding?check in with where your attention has been going with a lil awareness wheel: YOU are the center. Around you are categories to prioritize BALANCE within like: health, relationships, career, hobbies, goals, rest, etc.resource: https://www.als.net/ice-bucket-challenge/ WATCH THIS EPISODE + OTHER CONTENT: www.youtube.com/juliemericaGET A MONTHLY NOTE FROM ME: www.makeyourdamnbedpodcast.comTUNE IN ON INSTAGRAM FOR COOL CONTENT: www.instagram.com/mydbpodcastOR BE A REAL GEM + TUNE IN ON PATREON: www.patreon.com/MYDBpodcast

The resistance is diverse and often spontaneous. Additional disruptive action can win real gains (and already has).Large masses of people are experiencing, and expressing, a sense of solidarity with the oppressed.  There are no guarantees. But there is every reason to maintain some optimism and keep our eyes open.SOURCES:Mel Bienenfeld's Article: https://tempestmag.org/2025/06/prospects-for-organized-mass-struggle/ David Whitehouse’s We need to do this together the editorial In honor of Mayday John Lewis’ “good trouble”, an idea with mainstream support,Resources for Resisting a Coup: https://makeyourdamnbed.medium.com/practical-guides-to-resisting-a-coup-b44571b9ad66SUPPORT Julie (and the show!): https://supporter.acast.com/make-your-damn-bedDONATE to the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund: www.pcrf.netGET AN OCCASIONAL PERSONAL EMAIL FROM ME: www.makeyourdamnbedpodcast.comTUNE IN ON INSTAGRAM FOR COOL CONTENT: www.instagram.com/mydbpodcastOR BE A REAL GEM + TUNE IN ON PATREON: www.patreon.com/MYDBpodcastOR WATCH ON YOUTUBE: www.youtube.com/juliemerica The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Preparation never includes: overthink everything from every angle all the time. There’s a line between aware and too aware, and learning everything there is to know can’t save you from reality when it happens. The best preparation is hands on, so actually call your local politicians and see if you can speak to them one on one. Or if thats too much, go talk to your neighbors, or if that’s too much, go check out a library book and read it. And build upon that, and eventually maybe you can consider running for office and actually making a fucking difference in real tangible ways, or at least, find out who is in your local elections with your interests in mind, so you can support the fuck out of them.Remember most control is given freely, most power is given freely. Take that shit back, so that when you start to feel empowered, you can really do something with it. SOURCES: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1017/S0022381609990879 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversionary_foreign_policy  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFiGzEvdNUshttps://www.tiktok.com/@jamellebouie/video/7518576478913711373?lang=enResources for Resisting a Coup: https://makeyourdamnbed.medium.com/practical-guides-to-resisting-a-coup-b44571b9ad66SUPPORT Julie (and the show!): https://supporter.acast.com/make-your-damn-bedDONATE to the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund: www.pcrf.netGET AN OCCASIONAL PERSONAL EMAIL FROM ME: www.makeyourdamnbedpodcast.comTUNE IN ON INSTAGRAM FOR COOL CONTENT: www.instagram.com/mydbpodcastOR BE A REAL GEM + TUNE IN ON PATREON: www.patreon.com/MYDBpodcastOR WATCH ON YOUTUBE: www.youtube.com/juliemerica The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Making this shit backfire in whatever way possible, is a great way to push back against further escalations.  Keep talking about the protests, keep talking about the legality, keep talking about how unnecessary and expensive and deadly and cruel and violent and painful this war will be for everyone. Because this, like all the other chaos the regime has been enacting, is a very common dictator strategy. It’s another form of scapegoating. Get everyone focused and talking about this new real threat and fear of another potential outside enemy so we stop talking about the old real threat of the enemy domestically. This whole thing is rooted in a classic dictator strategy. Get people talking about something else because the media can’t not talk about THIS! It’s wwIII, forget the tanking economy, the grocery prices, the climate crisis, the gun crisis, the political violence crisis, the protests, the formal legal inquiries into a stolen election, the AI crisis, the surveillance and privacy crisis, the attacks on women, trans people, immigrants, and people who look like immigrants. Don’t talk about the waste of $45 million on a parade that looked like a chore, and don’t even think about the 5 million people that protested it. SOURCES: 1. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1017/S00223816099908792. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversionary_foreign_policy 3, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFiGzEvdNUsResources for Resisting a Coup: https://makeyourdamnbed.medium.com/practical-guides-to-resisting-a-coup-b44571b9ad66SUPPORT Julie (and the show!): https://supporter.acast.com/make-your-damn-bedDONATE to the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund: www.pcrf.netGET AN OCCASIONAL PERSONAL EMAIL FROM ME: www.makeyourdamnbedpodcast.comTUNE IN ON INSTAGRAM FOR COOL CONTENT: www.instagram.com/mydbpodcastOR BE A REAL GEM + TUNE IN ON PATREON: www.patreon.com/MYDBpodcastOR WATCH ON YOUTUBE: www.youtube.com/juliemerica The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Tomorrow I'll be back with a NEW episode, but for now, enjoy this fan favorite from episode 300 and something. According to science, humans kind of suck at knowing what will genuinely make us happier in the long run. Society tells us what we really want is to find love and money and success, but in reality, we may already have all the things that we could ever want to be happy people, but were too busy trying to meet some arbitrary societal deadline to notice.Resources for Resisting a Coup: https://makeyourdamnbed.medium.com/practical-guides-to-resisting-a-coup-b44571b9ad66SUPPORT Julie (and the show!): https://supporter.acast.com/make-your-damn-bedDONATE to the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund: www.pcrf.netGET AN OCCASIONAL PERSONAL EMAIL FROM ME: www.makeyourdamnbedpodcast.comTUNE IN ON INSTAGRAM FOR COOL CONTENT: www.instagram.com/mydbpodcastOR BE A REAL GEM + TUNE IN ON PATREON: www.patreon.com/MYDBpodcastOR WATCH ON YOUTUBE: www.youtube.com/juliemerica The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

On day 342 of this podcast, I said this: "If you’re like most people, the voice inside your head is probably pretty incessant. It’s probably very critical and anxious. That voice is not you. If it was you, it wouldn’t need to share all of it’s wild ideas with you. You would know the message and have already made decisions, instead you engage in these dialogues or arguments with yourself because you’re not that voice. You know it’s wrong or mean or negative and you recognize it. The work you must do is continue to recognize it. Continue to notice when it’s chatting with you. Other the voice and name it, or address it with love - because in reality the voice is looking out for you in the only way it knows how. Which, yeah, we can agree this voice is not a great parent, but it does love us. So address this voice, ask it to sit down. Hear it out, and then thank it for its concern. Remind it you’re safe and that the advice it is sharing is not helpful or needed at the moment. Then you can move on with you leading the way, rather than this wildcard with random ideas and thoughts leading you through fear. Other it, welcome it, and recognize our thoughts and feelings are often valid but not always rooted in truth or reality. Resources for Resisting a Coup: https://makeyourdamnbed.medium.com/practical-guides-to-resisting-a-coup-b44571b9ad66SUPPORT Julie (and the show!): https://supporter.acast.com/make-your-damn-bedDONATE to the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund: www.pcrf.netGET AN OCCASIONAL PERSONAL EMAIL FROM ME: www.makeyourdamnbedpodcast.comTUNE IN ON INSTAGRAM FOR COOL CONTENT: www.instagram.com/mydbpodcastOR BE A REAL GEM + TUNE IN ON PATREON: www.patreon.com/MYDBpodcastOR WATCH ON YOUTUBE: www.youtube.com/juliemerica The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Save the work until you get to the work. So often, we get caught up in our heads about potential problems and our workloads that we basically double the work on our plate by basically having to go through it twice. Have you ever been driving to work and pre-writing emails, or pre-planning meetings, or predicting problems? How many times have you left a job and started planning for the next day? Or worse - deciding what you can finish when you get home? Some jobs don’t allow you to leave the work at work - but I still encourage you to schedule in adequate time to take c are of yourself so you don’t burn out. In the show abbott elementary - which I cant get enough of and think everyone should watch immediately it’s so funny and heartfelt - but in case you haven’t seen it I will butcher a beautiful moment in my retelling of an episode where the main character was trying to do everything in her power to “save the school” on her own and she kinda screws everything up in a comedy of errors and another teacher offers a beautiful monologue explaining that the more experienced teachers aren’t stepping into the line of fire because they don’t care but because they don’t want to burn out. We care so much we refuse to burn out. If we burn out who’s here for the kids?And that’s something I had to learn the hard way as a teacher. I had to learn that in order to make the difference i was so desperate to make - I had to preserve my own wellbeing first. I had to create healthy boundaries or id work myself to the bone and never be able to recover.  If you take it like a staircase instead of a projectile, you’re less likely to fall straight back down to the earth.Resources for Resisting a Coup: https://makeyourdamnbed.medium.com/practical-guides-to-resisting-a-coup-b44571b9ad66SUPPORT Julie (and the show!): https://supporter.acast.com/make-your-damn-bedDONATE to the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund: www.pcrf.netGET AN OCCASIONAL PERSONAL EMAIL FROM ME: www.makeyourdamnbedpodcast.comTUNE IN ON INSTAGRAM FOR COOL CONTENT: www.instagram.com/mydbpodcastOR BE A REAL GEM + TUNE IN ON PATREON: www.patreon.com/MYDBpodcastOR WATCH ON YOUTUBE: www.youtube.com/juliemerica The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Book bans are unconstitutional. Florida is in a crisis.I'm on my way to rant at these people."What is unfolding in Hillsborough County is not the measured application of parental concern. It is a calculated effort to consolidate power through fear, to bypass legal precedent, and to silence diverse voices in Florida’s public schools. Educators and parents view this campaign as a state-directed form of censorship intended to intimidate professionals into abandoning their expertise. Books are being targeted and removed without meaningful review, and without regard for the input of local families or communities."THE SOURCES:HCSB meeting Live Stream: https://www.youtube.com/live/7tMHsGztEbY?si=cM-Y50XEBZ8LvIG_The PEN article: https://pen.org/floridas-hillsborough-county-faces-a-frightening-state-driven-censorship-campaign/The Beacon Article: https://www.tampabeacon.com/hillsborough_county/under-fire-from-state-hillsborough-s-ayres-pledges-to-pull-more-books/article_d6826981-001d-4f36-818b-4c6b6af7a4e8.htmlResources for Resisting a Coup: https://makeyourdamnbed.medium.com/practical-guides-to-resisting-a-coup-b44571b9ad66SUPPORT Julie (and the show!): https://supporter.acast.com/make-your-damn-bedDONATE to the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund: www.pcrf.netGET AN OCCASIONAL PERSONAL EMAIL FROM ME: www.makeyourdamnbedpodcast.comTUNE IN ON INSTAGRAM FOR COOL CONTENT: www.instagram.com/mydbpodcastOR BE A REAL GEM + TUNE IN ON PATREON: www.patreon.com/MYDBpodcastOR WATCH ON YOUTUBE: www.youtube.com/juliemerica The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.